Hellburner

“Hey. Maybe their brain-tape works. Maybe you can program human beings to act just like a robot—just like the damn AI they tried to hang over our heads. They don’t build one, they make us one. But what happens under fire, Dek? What happens when the answer isn’t in any damn tape, and those girls don’t know it? That’s when it’s going to make a difference….”

“Meg’s the coolest head under fire I ever saw. Meg saved our asses on R2, and you weren’t mere, Mitch, you couldn’t get to us, if you want me to bring that up—“

“Well, you can thank God she caught a bullet, because if Meg Kady had been flying, she might have taken out the Hamilton. Don’t blind yourself, Dek. She was a second-rate miner jock who got caught running contraband—she’s got a helldeck rep and now they’re going to hype her and Aboujib and Pollard on some tekicie tape and put you head to head with us. I don’t want to see you crack up. I don’t want to see those girls hurt. I don’t have a personal grudge against them, I just have a real gut reaction when I see somebody running totally on rep and getting somebody else fuckin’ killed, Dek, and sending this program down the out-chute.”

“Maybe we’ll see,” he said, set his jaw and looked elsewhere, because he didn’t have anything left to say on the subject and he was too tired and too shaken to punch Mitch out. There were things he could say, like firstly, Where were you, Mitch, when we were depending on you? But he didn’t honestly know that answer, he’d been too charitable to ask; and he didn’t want a war with Mitch.

Mitch is a mouth, he told himself, Mitch was born with an Attitude—he wouldn’t deal with me, except I’m the competition, and he has to take me seriously. It’s Shepherd, that’s all it is—Meg’s insystemer and she’s flash and they don’t like her style, that’s the problem—

Jamil said, “Dek, you have to protect yourself. I don’t personally know whether Kady and Aboujib have got it, I think Pollard probably does, but not the way they need to have it now. The examiners didn’t bust them through into the sims because they’re good, they busted them through because they were told to, that’s the truth, Dek, and we’re worried, we’re worried for you, we’re worried for your crew, we’re worried for the reason that we signed up for this program in the first place, because we’re in the center of some serious games, here—we got congresses playing games with a ship we could fly if they’d get the hell off our backs and quit screwing with the way we work—“

“We don’t want to see you killed,” Mitch said. “We don’t want to see anybody else killed. You better find out what’s going on. You better find out what your crew’s capable of—before you put your lives on the line out there, that’s what I’m saying. The lieutenant hasn’t got any power to do anything about anything right now. But he might tell you the truth and he might listen. And he might pass what he knows to the captain—who is the only authority we can think of who might pull the plug on this damned tape—‘ ‘

“It’s what they use Unionside,” Trace said. “That’s where they got the tech. They don’t even know what they’re doing with it, that’s my guess, they just got it, they can’t eome up with a fix on the program, and now they’re going to try this, they’re going to make you the guinea pigs. You’ve got to lay back, Dek. Lay back and lay out and don’t try to take those guys realtime…”

Mitch took Jamil’s arm, hauled him to the door. Trace lingered, just stood there, the only female in the group, with, he suddenly uncharitably surmised, other intentions than argument.

“Go on,” he said, “out.”

“Dek, I know they’re friends of yours, that’s what—“

“Trace. Get the hell out. Now. And turn out the lights.”

She turned out the lights. She left. He fell back on the wreckage of the bedclothes and felt the cold hit his chest and stomach—thought about getting up and putting the bed back in order, but he didn’t, right now, have the fortitude.

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